McLaren 1991

McLaren, Peter L . 1991. "Essay review of 'Literacy: Reading the word and the world' by Freire and Macedo 1987." In Minami and Kennedy 1991. (Reprint from McLaren 1988.) Interest level: academic.

States that within the last decades three positions have come to characterize the politics and pedagogy of literacy:

• Functional literacy
• Cultural literacy
• Critical literacy

In regard to cultural literacy, quotes Shirley Brice-Heath who notes, "The transformation of literacy skills into literate behaviors and ways of thinking depends on a community of talkers who make the text mean something."

Comments on two polar positions among exponents of "cultural literacy": liberal and conservative. In preface, Giroux (an exponent of Freire) provides three primary categories for approaching the concept of literacy:

• Literacy as cultural politics
• Literacy as liberating remembrance
• Literacy as narrative

Speaks of the need for students to understand the value of mastery of the dominant language.

• Bibliography module: McLaren 1991
• In overview module: Bibliography (Literacy): M
• In modular book: Bibliography (Literacy), by Doris Gallemore, Trudi C. Hunt, Jeanne Swanson, and Stephen L. Walter
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 26 August 1999

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